The aim of this paper is to explore some trans and feminist concerns about the gendered aspects of languages beyond English, focusing in particular on Spanish, Italian, and German. Historically, discussions about gendered language have often challenged the ways in which language can make women (in)visible by addressing the implicit and explicit androcentrism and sexism in our language. We call this the visibility project. Recently, questions surrounding trans-inclusiveness and the possibility of avoiding gender markers altogether have become more prominent, often (...) highlighting the issue of pronouns (e.g. the singular "they*). We call this the gender-neutrality project. However, anglophone philosophy offers a very limited discussion on how either gender-neutrality or visibility strategies could be applied to languages more gendered than English. To address this, we start by showing how gender expresses itself in the grammatical structure of our three sample languages, and identifying some of the specific visibility and neutrality strategies that could be (or are already) applied to them. This leads us to articulate an "innovative project which constructs nuanced and novel ways to transform gendered grammatical structures. Depending on their application, these strategies can fulfil gender-neutrality goals in some cases and visibility goals in others. This highlights, among other things, the ways in which genderqueer people have attempted to shape their linguistic resources in different linguistic contexts, while also opening up avenues for new research when it comes to discussions of gender and language. (shrink)

Gender-unfair language gives rise to injustice towards both women and non-binary people. Different strategies have been proposed to overcome this injustice, but which is the “best”? In this paper, I will approach this question from a normative perspective, taking into account practical and ethical aspects. I’ll first assess the feasibility and redundancy of the various strategies. Through this lens, no strategy stands out as the best, but each is best suited for specific contexts. I thus argue for a pluralistic approach (...) relying on multiple strategies. I further propose to combine more of them in the same text. This solution is the most efficient, but not the fairest: when considering ethical aspects, most strategies turn out inadequate. Only gender-neutral paraphrases, namely what I call “conservative neutrality”, are truly fair both towards women and non-binary people. I conclude by proposing an adjustment to such a strategy to counterbalance its practical shortcomings. Whether such a proposal will be taken on board by speakers is an empirical question that goes beyond the scope of this paper: my goal here is to provide reasons that could guide speakers’ decisions rather than arguing for which strategies are more likely to spread. (shrink)